


With My Life

by ashesinyourhair



Series: SPN AU Fragments [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dollhouse (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, M/M, fragment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:35:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesinyourhair/pseuds/ashesinyourhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dollhouse AU. Dean, newly hired as a handler, is introduced to the doll in his charge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With My Life

The doll’s eyelids flutter and twitch as the eyes beneath flick back and forth, like he’s dreaming. In a way, he is.

“You’re new.”

Dean lets the voice pull his attention away and refocuses on Naomi. She’s smiling at him like she knows all his secrets, and she probably does, considering what he had to go through to get this job.

“I’ve been a security agent for four years,” he says, not mentioning the Secret Service by name out of habit and because he doesn’t have to. Just like he doesn’t have to tell her any of this. “Spec Ops before that. I’m not green. The situation’s new. The job is what I’ve been doing for years.”

“Still.” Naomi flicks her eyes to the man in the chair, who’s clenching and relaxing his fists over and over again. Dean hadn’t asked if the process hurt, not wanting to appear squeamish or overly concerned about things that were not his job, but Naomi had volunteered that it didn’t. He assumed she wouldn’t go out of her way to lie. “This isn’t quite the same thing as being a security escort or even a personal bodyguard. It’s more intimate.”  
She looks back at him, and he has to resist the urge to look down. He knows she’s testing him. She’d seen psych file and noted that he has a tendency towards codependency, that he forms strong attachments which are a benefit as long as they remain intact but cripple him when they’re shattered. When he turned over the file, he assumed that would be it, he’d be out of the running for the job. But she’d called him back the next day, personally, and said that he was exactly what she was looking for in a handler. She’d practically offered him the job on the spot, even before all his screening results had come in. That was when he first understood how different this job must be, and he surprised himself with how much he suddenly wanted it.

“I expect you to fluorish,” Naomi says finally, and releases him from her gaze to scan the monitors hooked up to the machine. The procedure was already underway when they called Dean in, and he’d taken one look at the screens and decided that this was a part of the job he didn’t have to know that much about. His concern was the man—the doll—in the chair. He’d leave the technical concerns to the kid in the lab coat who kept darting around the room, checking monitors and equipment and muttering under his breath.

The kid makes some adjustment to the device attached to the doll’s head, the thing that looks like some monstrous sci-fi version of the hair dryers they have in salons, and then scurries back to his keyboard, his sneakers sliding the last couple of feet across the tiles. Dean slips past him to get a closer look at the doll.

“Don’t touch him!” the kid says.

Dean steps back, hands up. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Just… not yet,” the kid says, and resumes typing. “The calibration’s very delicate. Any disturbance now could corrupt the transfer. Besides, it works better if they haven’t had any human contact for a while.”

“Why?” Dean asks, and both the kid’s eyes and Naomi’s turn to him.

“Because then they want it more,” the kid says, like that explains everything. Dean nods as though it does.

The kid goes back to his work, but Naomi keeps her attention on Dean. This time, he doesn’t let himself get locked into eye contact. Instead he looks at the doll, really looks at him. He’s about average height, but compact, with a runner’s physique, and his hands—now clutching the armrests, though not very hard—are slightly bony, more slender than Dean’s. Maybe he played piano before all this. Maybe he didn’t, but does sometimes on engagements. Dean still has trouble believing that they can just pour knowledge like that into someone’s head, forego a lifetime of practicing and perfecting a skill and just upload it like in The Matrix. He’d seen a lot of things in his career that most people still thought were science fiction, but even he’d been surprised by this. He probably won’t completely buy it until he sees it for himself. Which he will, soon enough.

“Okay,” the kid says, and looks at Dean. “You ready? Remember the script?”

Dean’s mouth is dry, and there are butterflies in his stomach like he hasn’t felt since the day he joined up. “I think so.”

“You think so?” the kid says. “You better be sure. The programming’s very specific. I’ve got a printout if you think you need to—”

“I got it,” Dean says. “Just give me a go sign.”

The kid sighs, and pushes past him to stand behind the doll’s head, where he’s joined by Naomi. “Okay. Once I take this off, he’s gonna come out of it in about thirty seconds. Your voice needs to be the first thing he hears, and your face needs to be the first one he sees. When you say the first line, he’ll respond, then you say the second one, and he’ll respond again, and that’s it.”

Dean nods. The doll’s eyes have stopped moving beneath his lids, and his hands begin to relax.

“Here we go,” the kid says, and flips a switch, and pulls the device away.

The room falls silent. Dean counts the seconds, if only to avoid thinking too far ahead. He runs over the script again, though it’s simple enough, and there are blanks in his thoughts where the doll’s voice will go. He wonders what that voice will sound like. He wonders what he’s gotten himself into.

Dean’s just counted twenty-six when the doll sucks in a breath, and a moment later his eyes open. He’s looking straight ahead, not at Dean who’s standing by his side. “Wh…” he begins, and blinks in confusion. Dean looks at the kid, who nods.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” Dean says, and at the first syllable the doll whips his head around. By the end of the sentence his eyes are fixed on Dean’s—bright blue, beneath a furrowed brow that slowly relaxes now, as though he recognizes Dean and is comforted by his presence.

“Now that you’re here,” the doll says.

Dean stares. The doll’s pupils are dilated, and he’s gazing up at Dean as though he’s the center of the universe. In the back of his mind he knows it’s all a trick, a setup of perfectly choreographed cues and conditioning, but that doesn’t stop it yanking at something in his gut. For a fleeting moment he wonders if Naomi and this kid somehow managed to brainwash him too.

A movement out of the corner of his eye snaps him out of it, and he glances up to see the kid waving his hand in a “keep going” gesture. He scrambles for the next line of the script while the doll watches him placidly, almost rapturously.

“Do you trust me?” Dean asks him.

The doll doesn’t respond, and Dean’s stomach clenches. Then the doll’s eyes drop from his and travel down, across his chest and down his arm. The doll turns his hand over on the armrest, palm open; Dean hesitates only a moment before covering it with his own.

“With my life,” the doll answers, finally.

**Author's Note:**

> [Cross-posted to tumblr.](http://asheswrites.tumblr.com/post/68468890414/with-my-life)
> 
>  
> 
> This is a sort of trial run for a potential longer work. If you're interested in following this or similar pieces, you can:  
> • subscribe to my [SPN AU Fragments series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/49159)  
> • track my [tumblr tag](http://tumblr.com/tagged/asheswrites-deancas-Dollhouse-AU) for this fic


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